You’ve heard people say, “We live hand to mouth.” Maybe you’ve even said it. When someone says that, they are telling you that they do not save anything. Whatever they earn in income is immediately consumed. Every penny is spent and, with easy credit these days, many people have already spent more money than they will earn for many paychecks to come.

This is the American way, unfortunately.

But it isn’t the wise way. According to Proverbs 15:20, “The wise store up choice food and olive oil, but fools gulp theirs down.” Remember that wisdom has a moral quality to it in Proverbs. The way of the wise isn’t just something that smart people do; it is what godly people do. If a person takes God’s word seriously, that person knows that God created people to work and provide for ourselves. Also, God’s word tells us to prepare for difficult days. These revelations from God’s word are what cause a wise man to “store up choice food and olive oil.” A believer in God understands that difficult days will come so he prepares for them by saving.

A fool, by contrast, is a consumer. He or she craves the experience of pleasure, the excitement of new purchases, the status provided by nice things. Instead of saving, then, the foolish consumes everything as soon as it comes in. And so, verse 17 of our passage today prophesies, “Whoever loves pleasure will become poor; whoever loves wine and olive oil will never be rich.”

A person’s savings or lack of savings is not the only indicator of faith and godliness. Every Christian has areas where they are doing well and areas they need to improve. If you’re reading these devotionals every day, you’re taking a positive step toward a holy life. If you’re putting into practice the things that you read, that’s even more important. Maybe today’s proverbs will give you a new area in your life to work on for developing godliness. If you’re not saving anything, understand that is both a financial and spiritual problem, then ask the Lord to help you curb your spending and start saving.

An excellent first step on this would be to sign up for Financial Peace University this fall, which we are offering as one of our small groups. You can sign up for it on Sunday in your response cards or go to http://calvarysmallgroups.com and register for it right now.

“Get Rich Quick” schemes have a well-deserved bad reputation. If anyone gets rich from them, it is usually the one selling the scheme, not the one buying it or investing in it. In Proverbs 21:5, we read in these words in the last half of the verse, “...as surely as haste leads to poverty.” The first “as” completes a comparison, which we’ll get to in a minute. But notice that the verse teaches that “haste leads to poverty.” This haste can refer to the desire to get rich “quickly,” but the verse suggests that being in a hurry, generally, is poverty-inducing. When we are in too big of a hurry, we look for shortcuts, we may be tempted to be dishonest, we take foolish risks, we look for big scores through gambling instead of investing for the long-term.

That leads us to the first half of the verse, “The plans of the diligent lead to profit....” “Diligence” is a word that refers to deliberate, careful, conscious effort. It is a word that goes well with the word in the first part of the verse, “The plans” Diligent people make plans. They don’t take their life savings and give them to some guy who calls up offering to invest for them. They don’t make hasty decisions. Consequently, their plans “lead to profit.”

This verse, then, contrasts two diverging paths. The path that looks like a shortcut to wealth leads inevitably to “poverty” while the conscious, careful, deliberate strategy created by the diligent and followed step-by-step leads to profit. These verses are proverbs, of course, so they are not iron-clad promises but rather broad descriptions of what usually happens. Sometimes people put everything on one spin of the roulette table and win bigly but most of the time people who try to strike it rich fast lose everything. Likewise, sometimes people plan carefully, save diligently, invest wisely and still lose everything. It happens, but not usually.

Is there any area in your life where you are seeking a shortcut to success, a fast lane to easy street? Do you make plans and carry them out or are you in too big a hurry making a living that you never have time to design a life? Consider the warning and the encouragement in this proverb.

Also, remember the tortoise and the hare. You may feel like your plans are taking too long to develop and that you’re way behind. Don’t get hasty. Trust the process of diligence; it usually pays off in the end.